A weekly dose of craic and honesty from the finest storyteller this side of the M50...

Total Pageviews

Friday, 20 December 2013

“A lorry load of porter leads to an overflow of water”

Everyone knows that
person who is a “disaster of a chap”, the type of lad who attracts unfortunate
situations without even trying - ‘God that lad is an awful clutz’. Well, I’m
certainly related to this breed of people. Whatever can go wrong, will and does
go wrong when I’m in town. I’m the type of man that if I was to back the whole
field in a 4 horse race, on the flat, the 4 horses would somehow manage to fall,
or else plough into the railings either side of them, that kind of a chap. A
pure “Jinx” one might say.

This short story I’m
about to tell you confirms this fact. The Irish must have come up with the auld
saying “Murphy’s Law” when they heard I was entering this world!

Back in the summer of 2008,
we were getting an extension done to the family home. Plenty of hard graft went
into this, as is the case with all extensions. Ours was coming along well, the
blocks were laid to perfection, the roof was spot on and the plumber (a good friend
of mine) had a lot of his work done; the place was starting to take real shape.

One Thursday night, after
playing a championship match with my beloved club, Donaghmore/Ashbourne, we all
went back to the clubhouse for “a few pints” – standard enough. Before my aul
lad left the club that night the last thing he said to me was “now Rory, you
have work tomorrow, I’ll say no more!” Then he headed towards the exit, turned
back and says “o and, have u got a key!?” I replied “I do big joeseyyy!” and he
headed home.

Like most nights in
the club the craic was had, the die hard clubmen at the bar dissecting your
every move on the pitch. “Why didn’t you catch that ball?? ... Why didn’t you
fist that over the bar?? ... Why didn’t you lay it off to Davey?? Sure jaysus
he was straight in front of goal!!” - The usual craic that goes on in every GAA
club the length and breadth of the country.

Well after a good
stack of fine porter I eventually said enough is enough “Right lads I’m heading
home, have work tomorrow”(as if one more pint at 3am would make any difference
to the head of me the next morning.)

As I wandered home in the
early hours, with my gear bag in one hand and a rotten Benson and Hedges fag in
the other, belting out ballads to myself on the way up to the house, I got to
the front door and lo and behold I didn’t have a sniff of a key in my pocket -
“bollix”.

I says to myself “If I
knock on this door big Joe is going to kill me!” so as I was standing there
scratching my head, trying to think a way around not having to wake up the
mother and father, I looked over at the window of the extension and says “sure
I’ll jump through the window and in through the garage door, be grand”.

You must remember now
that I was after playing a champ match so the legs were banjoed, not to mention
the 12 pints I inhaled since the game. So let’s just say I wasn’t in the
greatest nick to be doing missions through a semi building site.

So with a great deal
of struggle I eventually got through the window, but as I was walking along the
joists, I wobbled for a second, lost my balance and with the gallon of porter I
had on board I had no hope of staying on my feet “hup be da jaysus” I slipped
in between the shagging things and hit the ground like a sack of spuds “a me
fucking ankle” nearly made shite of myself.

I pulled myself up,
limped up to the old garage door, hit the garage door a woeful attempt of a
shoulder, burst the door wide open and fell straight onto my hands and knees. I
then staggered up off the ground, left the door wide open and straight up to bed
with me. The mother does the shopping of a Friday so there was no hope of a few
sambos before I hit the cot.

The next morning I
woke to my phone going mental vibrating on my bedside locker, “Ahh shut up ta
fuck will ya, stupid alarm”. As I was lying in bed in an awful heap, dreading
getting up for work, didn’t I hear the auld man flush the toilet, let out a sneaky
fart in the hall and head down the stairs for morning tae.

Then all I heard in a
mild Offaly accent was “WHATTTT daaa faccckkk!!” The mother ran down straight
away in shock, then I just heard “Rory get yourself down here now”... “O no,
what did I do now, don’t tell me we’ve been robbed!??” were my thoughts. So I
dragged my stiff and hungover frame out of bed, crept down the stairs terrified
to what my eyes were about to witness.

O holy mother of sweet
divine jaysus. Wasn’t the whole kitchen FLOODED!! I must have burst a pipe when
I slipped through the joists the night before, and fecking water had come in
through the old garage door that I’d left open out of pure drunkenness. Now I
mean the kitchen was a swamp, this was the last thing I needed with a dreadful
hangover and having to face a day’s work!

“Awe dear lord da, I’m
so sorry. I’ll ring Martin (the plumber) straight away and have this sorted in
no time”. He gave me a look that would kill, then he turned to my poor mother,
who god love her was flat out tearing pages out of the Meath Chronicle to try
soak up some of the water, and says “I need a cigarette”.

He then brushed me out
of his way and headed out the back garden to gather his thoughts.

There was absolutely no
way I was giving him the opportunity to come back into the house and land me
with a well-deserved solid right hook, So before he came back in like a loose
bull, I grabbed my coat, slipped on my shoes, gave mammy my apologies and scampered
out the door to work.

I’ll tell you that one
morning I was never as happy to leave a warm house and head off to work hungover!!